Doug Lemov's field notes

Been talking a lot to coaches lately about building cultures of mental engagement and collaboration on their teams. Some recent posts here and here. If that’s of interest to you, here’s a new clip that will be really useful. It’s of Steve Freeman, Director at Black Watch Premier. His 2001 boys have been working on…

I’ve written several times here about Sensitivity Analysis questions and how valuable I think they are at helping students develop an ear for complex text. Yesterday while reviewing lesson plans for The Magician’s Nephew with curriculum writer Emily Badillo, I came across a new example Emily developed that I thought was worth sharing. It comes…

Our weekly video review had us buzzing this week. Among the teachers we watched was Laura Baxter, who teaches 4th grade at Nashville Classical Charter School. I wanted to share a really rich clip of a small and apparently mundane moment from her classroom for a couple of reasons. What first drew us to this clip…

As you may know, we’re writing an English curriculum, my team and I. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, it’s based on the reading of novels, challenging & demanding novels, at every grade level. It’s flexible and modular–teachers and schools can select from a range of books. It’s knowledge-building and writing intensive. It reinforces Close…

Here’s a slide I showed recently to coaches at a workshop: The slide is an attempt to describe a common challenge I see in the teaching/coaching of athletes. Here’s the scene. Athletes are playing. We are observing them as coaches. We notice something that needs to be improved. So we stop and make a teaching point. …

Welcome to Field Notes. I've named this blog to emphasize the idea that just about everything in my books is someone else's brilliant idea. My idea was just to write it down. I like the role of the observer and think there's a lot of power in it. Think about itthere isn't a problem in teaching or learning that someone somewhere hasn't solved. We just need to find them and take some field notes. So, join me here for discussion and observations related to Teach Like a Champion, Practice Perfect, and whatever else fits under the banner of teaching and practice.

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